Constitutional Amendment Now!

We need a Constitutional amendment that very meaningfully restricts campaign contributions and lobbying.  The Citizens United Supreme Court opinion used a twisted interpretation of First Amendment “free speech” rights to allow corporations to spend enormous amounts of money for or against candidates right up to election day.  In a shockingly brazen example of judicial activism, the Supreme Court invalidated very important parts of the bipartisan McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law.

As Evelyn Messinger of PBS MediaShift writes,

…this will be the first general election since the so-called “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision, which tossed out the last vestiges of regulations limiting campaign financing. Among other effects, this will translate into a record numbers of attack ads next fall. Taken together, these two changes may profoundly affect our democracy…

Unless a Constitutional amendment is passed soon that limits corporate campaign money and lobbying power, individual Americans will become even more powerless in our democracy.  Unequal political power is the ultimate problem affecting our country, and all the other crises, from high joblessness, to CEOs bringing down their companies and escaping with no punishment, to high health-care costs, to crumbling infrastructure, to overwhelmed social safety nets, to a failing education system, stem from it.  If corporations have more power in our democracy than American citizens, then politicians do not have an incentive to solve our problems.

The current activist Supreme Court is completely out of touch with the real suffering that is happening here on the ground in America.  If they will strike down attempts to control corruption, like McCain-Feingold, then we must go around them and create our own Constitutional amendment.